The anticipation had been building for months, and on Sunday at 3:30 PM, it finally began. 27 eager individuals with packed suitcases and ideas met at Cologne-Bonn Airport. After baggage check-in, security, and boarding, our plane took off for Barcelona. On the plane, we took a short rest and gathered our thoughts, as the coming days would be long and intensive. After the bus transfer to our accommodation, we finally arrived in Sant Peres de Ribes.

Is the accommodation really as good as it looks online? Will everyone feel comfortable here? Will we have enough opportunities to exchange ideas? Jesper, the landlord, welcomed us at the door, and even without his tour of the house, it was clear to everyone after 2 minutes: Yes, we will have a great time here!

After everyone had moved into their rooms, we came together again at 9 PM: a short speech, a toast with cold drinks, and the first informal exchange went on until late into the night.

Self-organization brings people together, so after getting up, we first went into town. 27 hungry people wanted to have breakfast, and we quickly became well-known. Bread counters at the bakery were completely emptied, large water canisters and kilos of sausage and cheese were bought, everything was put in two shopping carts, and then we went back. We were now known in the town, and the locals smiled when they saw our shopping caravan pass by twice a day.

After the first refreshment, we got down to business. We had various topics in our luggage and were able to achieve the following results:

• GeoServer Dockerization: All GeoServer versions since 2.5 (March 2014) are available as containers on Docker-Hub. In addition, future releases of GeoServer will also be automatically published there. For our customers, this is an option to convert existing architectures to Docker and to benefit from timely updates from GeoServer. Version updates will therefore be even more convenient.
• 3D WebGIS: We were able to gather further experience with Cesium, a JavaScript library that is used to provide 3D solutions on the web, among other things. Specifically, we examined options for visualizing massive point clouds, including the additional placement of any 3D objects within them. The dimensioning of those objects and the free tapping of distances were also evaluated.
• Update from Java 8 to Java 9 / 10 / 11 in SHOGun: New Java versions are now released in shorter cycles, and it is therefore necessary to adapt applications to them as quickly as possible. For our backend framework SHOGun, the essential step for supporting the next versions 9, 10 and 11 of Java has now been completed. Before we provide this support in a new SHOGun release, we will publish the current status with support for Java 8 again. Projects that are based on SHOGun can then be updated to the new versions. In particular, the support of Java 11 (the presumed LTS version of Java) is crucial in order to participate in current features and bug fixes as well as performance improvements.
• Alternative Base Client: Based on react-geo, we have created a base client application that relies on the latest technologies and is designed from the outset for compatibility with SHOGun. In a SHOGun Docker base container to be created in the future, this application will be included by default. This client can be the basis for your own projects that want to communicate with SHOGun. The work on this will continue in the coming weeks.
• Development of Gondolin, a NodeJS Backend: This provides a lean backend with flexible modeling of the entities to be managed. As an example, authentication via JSON Web Token was also implemented. Ultimately, this consolidation resulted from our Cropwatch research project and can be an alternative to SHOGun, although of course there are still functional differences.
• GeoStyler: We have started developing a browser extension that makes it possible to display the GeoStyler on any website. It can be used as an alternative to manually writing SLDs in GeoServer. Because even with the latest improvements in the GeoServer user interface, this can still be a error-prone and time-consuming undertaking. With the extension, you will soon be able to ‘click together’ even complex SLDs with appealing surface elements.

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Sofas, lounges, secluded rooms and gardens offer a perfect atmosphere to deal with these topics outside the office. But don’t worry dear customers, if desired, we also contacted you from Spain and supported you.

From 6 p.m., the changing kitchen team started preparing dinner. Our in-house “five-star” chef and his helpers spoiled us every evening with changing regional specialties. At 9 p.m. everyone came together again, their heads full of ideas, but first the food intake had to be secured. After the appetizer, there was a daily exchange in which everyone could bring themselves up to date on what they had done and achieved during the day and what points were on the agenda for the next day.

On the afternoon of the second day, we had sat on our sofas long enough, discussed, programmed and found solutions. Exercise was on the program and we set off into the hilly countryside to explore the landscape. Feel the wind around your head, take a deep breath and back through the vineyards.

There was still time until dinner, so the Kanban game came in very handy. Half of the staff was involved and tried to fold boats, each in one operation. The first round was about performing your work step as quickly as possible, regardless of your successor, and passing the paper on. As a result, those who were at the end of the process and had much more to fold were congested and the stress factor increased considerably. A second round followed. Here it was important not to pass on your paper until the successor had also carried out his work step. The result was amazing: in the second round we were more productive, the quality increased and we were much more relaxed. We even had time to talk about the evening thunderstorm. In these 60 minutes we learned a lot again and now it will be about implementing Kanban in practice.

On Thursday, the joint trip to Barcelona was on the program. La Rambla, Sagrada Familia, the harbor with the statue of Christopher Columbus or a walk on the beach were just a few of the possibilities to discover this wonderful metropolis. In the evening we all came together again in a tapas bar and let ourselves be spoiled with culinary delights.

After a week, the time was unfortunately over and we had to leave our Masia Victoria again and start our return flight. As a conclusion, we can say: It was a valuable time for us and our customers.